Small Groups

Thank you for visiting a website of Christianity Today International (CTI). CTI "Sites" include ChristianityToday.com, ChristianityToday.org, PreachingToday.com, ChurchLawAndTax.com, ChurchSalary.com, BuildingChurchLeaders.com, SmallGroups.com, EkstasisMagazine.com, and other internet sites on which this Privacy Policy is posted. When we use the terms "we," "us," or "our," we refer to CTI and affiliated ministries of CTI ("Our Organization").

Protecting your privacy is very important to us. To assure you of your privacy, we provide this notice to help you understand our commitment to security, what kinds of information we may gather about you when you visit our websites, how we may use that information, and how you can correct the information.

Information We Collect

Automatically Collected Anonymous Information
When you visit a CTI website, certain anonymous information about your visit is automatically logged as it is at most websites. This may include information about your Internet Protocol (IP) address, domain name, browser type, mobile device type, access time, and referring website address. This information is not personally identifiable and is only used in aggregate (not in any way that personally identifies you).

Personally Identifiable Information
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is any information about you as an individual that would enable someone to contact you. Examples include your name, address, telephone number, or email address. We may ask for such information when you subscribe to an email newsletter, make a donation, order a magazine or website subscription, purchase a product or service, participate in an online survey, post a comment, enter a contest or sweepstakes, or use a service or tool such as emailing a page.

We will not collect any PII about you unless you provide it. Providing any PII to us is voluntary. If you do not want us to obtain any personally identifiable information about you, do not submit it.

At some CTI websites, you may submit information about other people. For example, you might submit a recipient's name and address to send a gift. We will use this information you submit about other people only to fulfill your request and for no other purpose.

You can visit and browse our websites without revealing any PII, but you may not be able to access certain content, features or services if you choose not to disclose PII.

How We Use This Information

Aggregated information may be used in many ways. For example, we may combine information about the usage patterns of our visitors to learn which pages are visited most or what features are most attractive. Aggregated information may occasionally be shared with our advertisers and business partners, but it cannot be used to contact you individually.

PII you provide voluntarily may be used in the following ways:

• to improve the content of our websites,
• to fulfill your requests for our products and services,
• to correspond with you about your purchases,
• to notify you if you win a contest prize,
• to notify you of updates to our website,
• to share with agents or contractors who assist in providing support for our internal operations,
• to transfer to a successor entity in connection with a corporate merger, consolidation, sale of assets or other corporate change respecting our websites, and
• to contact you for our—or other reputable organizations'—marketing purposes (email marketing promotions are sent via our own system rather than sharing email addresses with third parties).

Additionally, CTI may use PII to provide internet security and to meet legal requirements. As a result, CTI reserves the right to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the investigation of alleged unlawful activities committed on or through our websites. CTI may disclose PII in the course of officially authorized law enforcement investigations or as required to comply with a current judicial proceeding, court order, warrant, subpoena, or other legal process served on CTI. Further, in the event of a suspected attempt to deliberately circumvent our websites' security with the intent to gain unauthorized access or to cause digital or physical damage, CTI may share PII about a suspected intruder with law enforcement officials. CTI shall have no legal liability for such disclosures. Notwithstanding any of the above, CTI in its sole discretion reserves the right to challenge the validity of any subpoena, court order, warrant, or other legal process.

If you choose to post comments to a blog, article, or any social media account affiliated with CTI, any information you submit may become public. It may become accessible through search engines or, if you sign in using credentials from a third-party social networking service, it may become accessible to users on that service. Unless otherwise noted, we do not limit the distribution of information that you share using these features. CTI is not responsible for any personal information you choose to make public via these forums, and you agree that such sharing will be deemed to have been permitted by you, not CTI. If you prefer not to have your information published, do not submit it. If you choose to submit content for publication (e.g., a letter to the editor), we may publish any information you have provided to us.

Opt Out or Delete Personally Identifiable Information

You may request that we delete the personal information we hold about you. Please note that we may need to retain limited amounts of personal information after completing your request for legal compliance purposes. Additionally, we may postpone the completion of your request when your personal information is necessary to fulfill our obligations to you. For example, if you are an active subscriber we may wait until your subscription expires before fulfilling your request.

If you wish to opt out of the use of your PII for marketing purposes or delete your PII, please let us know via the following links:

ChristianityToday.com’s My Account: Log into your account here.

Or you can contact us here.

Cookies & Web Beacons

Cookies are a technology that helps us serve you better. Our cookies collect no personally identifiable information. We use cookies to help us know how many people visit our websites and when; to store your personal preferences for paid online subscription services you may subscribe to, in order to provide you with the best experience possible; and to record session information, such as items that you add to your shopping cart.

For example, we may use Google Analytics and Advertising cookies to perform statistical, demographic, interest, and marketing analyses for product development; to generally inform advertisers about the nature of our customers; and, to improve customer relationships. We may also use these cookies to deliver more relevant advertising through Facebook or Google’s Display Network, but this information is not personally identifiable and is only used in aggregate.

Our third-party service providers and advertisers may also use cookies to manage and measure the performance of advertisements displayed on or delivered by or through our websites and to provide more relevant advertising. See "Collection of Information by Third-Parties, Ad Servers, and Sponsors" below for more information.

Our third-party service providers or advertisers may use web beacons (clear .gifs) or similar technologies, which are small pieces of code placed on a web page or in an email newsletter, to monitor the behavior and collect data about the visitors viewing the web page or email newsletter. For example, web beacons may be used to count the users who visit a web page, open an email newsletter, or deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing a web page.

You have the choice to set your browser to accept all cookies, notify you when a cookie is set, delete cookies periodically, or reject all cookies. You may also opt-out of Google Analytics’ cookies here, Facebook’s cookies here, and Hotjar’s cookies and services here. Generally, deleting or rejecting cookies also disables web beacons. Please be aware that rejecting all cookies may prevent you from enjoying the full features offered through CTI's websites as well as others’. Check the "Help" section of your browser for more information.

Collection of Information by Third Parties, Sponsors and Ad Servers

Advertisers and websites that have links on our websites may collect information directly from you if you click an advertisement or link to visit another website. This Privacy Policy applies only to information you provide to us and not to any information you may provide to a third party. Please consult the privacy policy of any other website you visit to know what information they may collect and how they may use it.

CTI sometimes partners with third parties that operate websites and services you can use. For example:

• A website may be cobranded. When you provide personal information via a cobranded website, you may have the option of providing it to either or both parties.
• An online store may be hosted by BigCommerce or Shopify Store. These store platforms host the store pages, ordering system, and order data. These store platforms automatically collect order information but may only use this information in the aggregate, according to the Privacy Policy posted on our Stores’ platforms. You may read an example here.
• A contest or sweepstakes may be sponsored by or co-sponsored with third parties as identified in the contest or sweepstakes' Official Rules. By virtue of these relationships, the third parties may obtain PII that visitors voluntarily submit to participate in the website activity. We have no control over these third parties' use of this information. Consult the Official Rules to determine whether these third parties will obtain such information.
• CTI provides readers the convenience of signing onto our websites using third-party social networking login credentials for accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, Apple, LinkedIn or Google. This allows you to link your existing social profile to your CTI account. Once connected, you will be able to post content directly on our websites or share content to social networks from our websites. Our websites may also access certain information from your third-party social networking profile, such as your name, profile picture, gender, and email address.
• We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices (in particular device's IP address (captured and stored only in anonymized form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display our website). Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile. Neither Hotjar nor CTI will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user. For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy by clicking on this link. You can opt-out to the creation of a user profile, Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our site, and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link.

Ad Choices

Some of the advertisements you see on CTI websites are delivered by third parties who may also collect information through cookies and web beacons about your online activities on CTI websites or across the internet, all in an effort to understand your interests and deliver advertisements that are relevant to you. Our ads often are based on the content of pages you are viewing, but third parties may also provide ads tailored to your interests.

Third parties that may collect information on our websites in order to serve advertising tailored to your interest may include, but are not limited to, Facebook, Google Ad Manager, Sizmek by Amazon, and Zedo. Find more information about their privacy policies, and whether they offer a way to choose not to have your information used for advertising purposes, by clicking on the hyperlinked company names. If these companies are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), you may also find opt-out information at the NAI consumer opt-out page. You may also learn more about the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) and how to make choices about interest-based ads from participating third parties by visiting the DAA consumer opt out page.

Use by Minors

CTI's websites are general audience websites, and we do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. Any information collected online by CTI from children under 18 is used only for the purpose of delivering the requested product or service. Please instruct your children to ask you for permission before providing any information about themselves to CTI, and visit the Federal Trade Commission website for more information about safe online activities.

California Privacy Laws

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which took effect on January 1, 2020, provides California consumers with the right to require many for-profit companies not to sell their personal information. While CTI is a not-for-profit organization and not subject to the CCPA, we still invite you to review the information we collect—and how we use it—in the "How We Use This Information" section above. If you wish to opt out of any of CTI’s practices that go beyond the information necessary for CTI to deliver products and services you voluntarily wish to read and use, please contact us via one or both of the following links based on your relationship with us:

• Print and site subscriptions, store purchases, and email newsletter subscriptions: Login to your account here.
• If you do not want to receive email from us in the future, please contact us via this page.

Additionally, beginning on January 1, 2005, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 requires CTI (1) to enable its customers who are California residents to request certain information regarding its disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes or (2) to offer the opportunity for customers to opt out of having their personal information disclosed to third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes.

CTI has always offered—and continues to offer—the opportunity for customers to opt out of having any personal information disclosed to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. If you prefer not to receive such direct marketing offers, please contact us at the links provided above.

Beginning on January 1, 2014, an amendment to Section 22575 of California's Business and Professions Code also requires CTI to disclose to its customers who are California residents how it responds to web browser “do not track” (“DNT”) signals or other mechanisms that provide consumers the ability to exercise choice regarding the collection of personally identifiable information about their online activities over time and across third-party websites or online services. CTI's websites do not currently respond to any DNT signals. However, you still may wish to make choices about interest-based ads from participating third parties by visiting the DAA consumer opt out page as described in the Ad Choices section above.

European Union Residents

If you reside in the European Union (EU), CTI invites you to review its "How We Use This Information" section above. If you, as an EU resident, wish to make any requests of CTI as provided in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), please contact us via one or both of the following links based on your relationship with us:

• Print and site subscriptions, store purchases, and email newsletter subscriptions: Login to your account here.
• If you do not want to receive email from us in the future, please contact us via this page.

International Transfer

This website is governed by and operated in accordance with the laws of the United States of America (USA). CTI makes no representation that this website is governed by or operated in accordance with the laws of other nations. By using this website and submitting any personal information, visitors from outside of the USA acknowledge that this website is subject to USA law, consent to the transfer of personal data to the USA, and waive any claims that may arise under their own national laws. If you do not want your personal information transferred to the USA, do not provide it on this website.

Our Commitment to Security

CTI has appropriate physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in place at its physical location to help protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of any information you may provide via our websites, including address information and credit card numbers. We use industry-standard encryption technologies when transferring and receiving consumer data exchanged with our websites. When we transfer and receive certain types of sensitive information, such as financial information, we redirect visitors to a secure server and notify visitors through a pop-up screen on our website. Please note that no security system is impenetrable. As effective as these measures are, we cannot guarantee the security of our database nor that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet.

How to Update Your Information

You may access and update the personal information you have provided to us by choosing an option below:

Print and site subscriptions, store purchases, and email newsletter subscriptions: Login to your account here.

Updates to Privacy Policy

From time to time, we may use customer information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. We will post any such policy changes on our website to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check our website periodically.

The Privacy Policy posted on this website was updated on or about November 14, 2022.

We welcome your comments regarding this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us.

Christianity Today International
PO Box 788
Wheaton, IL 60187-0788
630.260.6200